Saturday, January 28, 2012

Official announcement came out a few days back. Only minor stories this year.

All nominees are online. All originally published in UK during 2011.

List below is in order of my preference - best first, unread last. Links on author or publisher fetch more matching fiction. My rating is in brackets. Where I have a separate post on a story, link on title goes there.

[novella] Nina Allan's "The Silver Wind" (B); download; Interzone 233: Evil British government has been secretly experimenting with randomly picked citizens without informing them. Experiments that leave the victims grotesquely changed in body, if they survive at all. Experiments with a device that puts the subject in a parallel universe or in a different time.

This is the story of a man who will be thus stranded in a parallel London, never able to return.

British readers might find it more interesting as the story makes several references to what appear to be popular political issues there.

Kameron Hurley's "Afterbirth" (C); download; author’s own website: Way too complex to describe story & completely pointless. A world where women are required to have at least some children, though the responsibility for raising them is of the state. A woman is interested in some sort of astronomical artifact.

[winner] [novelette] Paul Cornell's "The Copenhagen Interpretation" (C); download; Asimov's, July 2011: In a Europe where diplomatic messages are conveyed via human couriers by burning the message in a courier's head in a language known only to two end parties, & even the courier doesn't know the message. Where walls & doors of rooms are made by bending space itself.

Don't ask me what the story is about, though. It made zero impression & I immediately forgot. Something about a spy getting involved in an intrigue where terrorists have got hold of a courier carrying a valuable message.